"I'm a cop
with a degree in social work," Chip Harding often says when asked about
his approach to law enforcement. "Although some people find that to be an
unusual combination, I do
not."

?>While still
in college, Chip became committed to breaking the cycle that was leading
so many troubled youths to lives of crime as adults. During his summers
off from ?>VirginiaCommonwealthUniversity, Chip worked at the BeaumontJuvenileCorrectionalCenter in PowhatanCounty and interned at a juvenile halfway house
in Richmond. After graduating in 1974, he
became a probation counselor with Virginia's juvenile court
system.

Chip showed
his young offenders "tough love," holding them accountable for following
the conditions of their probation, such as attending school every day and
being home before their court-imposed curfew every
night.

But after
four years, he said, he found himself "working within a system that wasn't
prepared to back me up. Good-intentioned judges were giving kids break
after break and, in my view, creating a new generation of hardcore
criminals."

In 1978,
Chip left the Juvenile Court and joined the Charlottesville Police
Department, where he started out "walking the beat" on Charlottesville's
then-new Downtown Mall. Chip was soon was promoted to detective where he
worked many violent crimes over the next few years.

By the early
80s, Chip's focus had shifted almost entirely to the damaging effects that
illegal drugs were having on the community "It seemed that 80 percent of
the people I was arresting were abusing drugs," he said. He became so
concerned about this drug-crime connection that "I began to come in on my
own time and make drug arrests independent of my regular case
load."

Chip
later became one of the area's first detectives dedicated full time to
narcotics cases and worked with the Virginia General Assembly on
legislation that now allows assets seized from drug dealers to be retained
by police to beef up their drug enforcement programs. In 1989, then
Sergeant Chip Harding was the first local officer ever selected to
supervise a Federal Drug Taskforce.

Chip
receives his diploma from then FBI Director Louis
Freeh

For a
decade, Chip has been a champion for using DNA to solve crimes. In 1997,
when he discovered that ?>Virginia's
innovative DNA databank was producing few results because it had never
been adequately funded by the General Assembly, he founded the group
Citizens for DNA. Citizens for DNA lobbied the governor and General
Assembly, which ultimately voted with strong bipartisan support to fund
the Databank fully.

?>Since then,
the Databank's rate of "hits"-when evidence from a current crime scene is
matched with the DNA of a previously convicted criminal-from two or three
per year to two or three per day. Furthermore, the
Charlottesville-Albemarle area, in particular, has one of the nation's
highest per-capita rates of crimes solved by DNA
evidence.

For six years, Chip held the rank of captain with the Charlottesville
Police Department. In that position, he provided top-level leadership to a
department of more than 100 officers while diligently managing a complex,
multi-million-dollar budget.

In 2007, Chip was recognized in New Orleans by Parade Magazine and the International Association of Chiefs of Police. At their annual banquet he was presented a plaque recognizing him as one of the “Top 10 Cops In America”.

On November 7, 2007, he won the election for sheriff of Albemarle County by 10% of the vote. He took office as sheriff on January 1, 2008 and currently holds that position. Chip plans on seeking re-election in 2011.

He relies on
his diverse experience in all levels of law enforcement, his continuing
formal education - he is a graduate of the FBI National Academy in
Quantico, Virginia, and has completed a number of courses in strategic
leadership at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business-and
his ongoing, "real-world" education from his personal mentors-leaders in
law enforcement locally and across the country.